Oracle VirtualBox (formerly Sun VirtualBox, innotek VirtualBox and Sun xVM VirtualBox) is a free and cross-platform virtualization application that provides a family of powerful x86 virtualization tools designed for desktop, server and embedded use. VirtualBox can be used on Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows platforms to run virtual machines of any of the aforementioned operating systems, as well as any BSD distribution, IMB OS/2 flavors, DOS, Netware, L4, QNX, and JRockitVE.

Supports 32-bit and 64-bit architectures

At the moment, the program is capable of running only AMD64/Intel64 and x86 architectures. By default, when creating a new virtual machine, you will be able to select the operating system that you plan on virtualizing. Ever since Oracle acquired the Sun Microsystems company, VirtualBox is actively developed by a team of professional engineers who implement new features and functionality with every release.

Virtual machines can be highly customized

Once a new virtual machine has been created in VirtualBox, users will be able to change its type, version, boot order, chipset, pointing device, base memory (RAM), processors, video memory, monitor count, audio driver and controller, network adapters, serial and USB ports, and storage devices. When talking about storage devices supported by VirtualBox, we can mention that you will be able use a virtual CD/DVD image file (also known as ISO image) or use the host CD/DVD drive for running the virtualized OS.

The most sophisticated and powerful virtualization software

Support for USB devices is also a controversial feature of this application, because you will need to do some tweaking before it will work as intended. But all in all, this is one of the most sophisticated and powerful virtualization software for Linux operating systems.

Oracle VM VirtualBox was reviewed by Marius Nestor, last updated on March 3rd, 2015